One of Europe’s largest airline groups is reportedly considering a name change because its current moniker doesn’t truly reflect the brands under its wings or its future growth plans.
The airline group in question is Air France-KLM, which was formed in 2004 during a period of intense airline consolidation in Europe when Air France and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines agreed on a mutual merger.
Even then, the Air France-KLM Group didn’t properly reflect all of its brands, as it also included KLM’s wholly owned Transavia subsiderary which has turned into the group’s low-cost brand.
Now, however, group chief executive Benjamin Smith is said to be working on a name change, given its recent investment in SAS Scandinavian Airlines, along with its bid to acquire a major stake in TAP Air Portugal.
If reports are to be believed, Smith has decided that the group’s name has to change in order to properly reflect that the French-headquartered holding company isn’t just made up of Air France and KLM.
A potential name that has been mooted is ‘The Blue Group’, although this might just be a working title for the project behind the brand redesign.
Smith considers this a strategic rebranding that reflects the group’s growth and future ambitions, although Dutch media reports suggest that the name change isn’t popular with all of the senior executives at the company.
Within Europe, we’ve generally seen airline consolidation occur with the group company retaining the name of the dominant company. For example, the Lufthansa Group has grown to include Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Discover, Eurowings, and SWISS… Oh, and also its namesake airline, Lufthansa.
Ryanair also owns several other brands, including its Polish subsidiary Buzz, Lauda, and Malta Air, all under the Ryanair Group umbrella.
The one exception to this rule is International Airlines Group (IAG), the parent company of British Airways and Iberia, which also owns Aer Lingus and Spanish low-cost airlines Vueling and LEVEL.
IAG was formed as a mutual merger between British Airways and Iberia, but the founding group chief executive, Willie Walsh, always envisioned IAG to be much larger than BA and Iberia, although the group’s actual growth has been more constrained than Walsh had planned.
In any case, industry experts believe that a new era of airline consolidation is upon us, so now could be the perfect time for a group like Air France-KLM to rebrand to a more neutral name.
